Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that police have assaulted the family members of Ram Kishan Grewal, the ex-soldier who committed suicide, and that the “least this government can do is to apologise to the family for making them suffer.”

Elaborating that he only wanted to meet the deceased’ family for two minutes to share their grief, Gandhi said, “What is sad is the way the government behaved with the family of the dead solider on the most difficult day of their lives. When they came out to meet me, they were beaten up, bundled into a jeep and taken to the police station,” he said.

“A martyr’s family is arrested. This is Modi ji’s India,” he told reporters outside RML Hospital. “I asked the policemen why they were detained? They policemen said they had orders from above,” he told reporters.

He was also heard arguing with policemen outside RML Hospital. “A new India is in the making, you have to identify it… It is a result of their mentality. It is a particular type of mentality. It is an undemocratic type of mentality,” he said. “What wrong have I committed? You arrested me and now you are saying I am politicising the issue…,” he added.

Top sources in the Congress said the party will not “abandon the issue”. There is considerable anger in the Congress over the way its leaders were treated today, a senior leader said.

“If they are true to the praise of the Armed Forces, they must, without any delay, on war footing, find immediate solutions and remove all anomalies of the pay commission and implement OROP,” former Defence Minister A K Antony said.

Congress leader P Chidambaram tweeted, “Home Minister should remove the Police Commissioner. If he is powerless to do so, he should tender his resignation.”

CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said: “These are ominous signs. The detention of opposition leaders for visiting a dead veteran’s family is a travesty of democracy.”